Minutes passed.

Slowly, George’s breathing returned to a resting state. Slowly, so did her own. Slowly, she counted more ticking seconds.

663 seconds later, she reached across the bed and put her hand tentatively to George’s shoulder. “George,” she spoke softly. “George.”

“What?”

“The music’s exactly the same.”

He didn’t answer. Even after a long time, he didn’t answer.

Veronica didn’t speak again. Her legs were itching unbearably and she allowed herself to scratch, savouring the respite, overlooking the soreness she knew would follow. George didn’t notice. In the darkness, she could see that he was restless too, his chest moving rapidly up and down, his breathing more shallow than normal, his face buried as far as he could press it into his pillow. She paused her scratching. Was he crying? She had never seen George cry. Veronica listened, but suddenly, as though sensing George’s desolation, from the other side of the wall, the baby they had heard the previous night began to cry again. Not a whimper, not a moan, but a loud, inconsolable wail that continued for the next thirty minutes, unheeded, unattended, as though, like George and Veronica’s own child, it wasn’t there at all.

Simone

On the street below, summer is bursting forth in grand displays of colour. It drips extravagantly from window boxes and swishes with bohemian confidence around corners. Flyers appear on lampposts to announce a local street fair, a farmer’s market, a concert in the park. Children whizz past on balance bikes and scooters and two-wheelers, graduating with age, decorated with bells and spokes and streamers. Parents saunter behind with unbranded cups of ethically sourced coffee. The air smells of cut grass.

It is the shame that keeps Simone inside. She sits for a long time at the window, smoking a series of cigs, watching Veronica dismount from her bike and glance upwards. There is a part of her that longs, irrationally, to dart out onto the street and somehow befriend this woman, to find a way to create that imagined casual conversation against railings. But the shame throbs. There is a spongy, purple-redness to it.

They would never have been friends anyway. It was a stupid fantasy. Somebody like Veronica would never have been fooled; sooner or later the grime and ugliness would have seeped out of her. What was the difference then if it crashed through walls? The foolishness was only in her caring.

She can’t go to work. The bruise by her mouth is too visible for standing on reception, but at least she hasn’t lost the gym job altogether. She told her manager that she was ill with a vomiting bug and he allowed, nay encouraged, her to delay her start.

Dominic didn’t say a word. She can’t help feeling hurt by this, let down, though she realises that her son has neither the power nor the imagination nor the motivation to do anything. And much of that is her fault.

Jasmine can survive for a few days without going outside.